Trailer hitches are used to couple a powerless vehicle to a powered vehicle for purposes of towing. Commonly known powerless vehicles include recreational "fifth-wheel" trailers and semi-truck trailers. These powerless vehicles are pulled by powered vehicles such as pickup trucks, flatbed trucks, semi-trucks, and the like.
Trailer hitches are typically mounted to the powered vehicles and designed to receive a complementary tow member provided on the towed vehicle. In the context of fifth-wheel trailer hitches, the hitch has a clamping mechanism for receiving and clamping onto a towing pin mounted on the nose of a fifth-wheel trailer. This arrangement allows the fifth-wheel trailer to pivot about its towing pin to facilitate guidance of the trailer around corners and during parking.
Common fifth-wheel trailer hitches have a support unit that is fixedly mounted to a truck. The clamping mechanism is pivotally connected to the support unit to pivot about a single axis that is parallel to an axis defined by the rear wheel axles of the truck. In this manner, the trailer can move up and down relative to the truck when driving over hills and gullies. However, under some circumstances, the fifth-wheel hitches are difficult to operate because they only pivot about the one axis. For example, when the trailer is not level with the truck, but is tilted slightly relative thereto (e.g., due to uneven ground), it is often difficult if not impossible to disconnect the towing pin from the jaws of the uni-directional pivoting hitch because the pin is not properly oriented within the clamping mechanism. Common hitches simply do not yield or pivot to compensate for the improper pin orientation caused by the uneven tilt.
This invention provides a trailer hitch that has multi-directional pivoting capabilities.